The fine art of enjoying 'new' Myrtle Beach

By BILL HENDRICK-COX NEWS SERVICE
The Palm Beach Post

We headed east, thinking the worst.
We expected kitsch — the same kind of tawdry, tacky, neon-flashing gaudiness that over the years has earned Myrtle Beach a reputation as a Wal-Mart Riviera, a mecca for hopeful teens on the make.

Well, that Myrtle still exists. But city fathers and business leaders have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade to rejuvenate the place. Turns out, there was more than we could possibly do in three days --- way, way more.

Of course, you can relax on the fine-sand white beaches, where the ocean splashes up to within 40 yards of an endless row of new or renovated high-rise hotels. But the fun has only begun when you tire of the sun.

Sure, there are still rickety roller coasters, sticky-floored honky-tonks, barking carnies, throngs of students and beached denizens distinguishable from pilot whales only by sunglasses.
But now there's more — even fine art — and in a town where art once meant T-shirts emblazoned with images of naked women.

Townies tipped us to the Collectors Cafe & Gallery, just a few miles north of the cheesy Pavilion amusement park, a European-style eatery full of huge paintings ranging in style from realism to impressionism to surrealism. And for the even more serious-minded, there's the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum.

Not that we're saying Myrtle Beach is about to contend with New York as a cultural mecca, or with resorts like Hilton Head for panache. But that if you shortchange the town, you're only shortchanging your potential fun.

After checking into our beachfront hotel, the Four Points Sheraton Resort a couple miles south of the Pavilion, we gazed at the azure, roiling sea a few moments and set out to find the new Myrtle.
It didn't take long. About a mile west of the Pavilion we found a new 350-acre complex called Broadway at the Beach, made up of more than 100 upscale specialty shops, paddle boats plying a huge man-made lake, all kinds of restaurants and nightclubs, and amazing amusements.

We stopped first at the 26-acre NASCAR SpeedPark. It has seven racetracks where kids, and as many adults, zip around challenging courses in everything from go-carts to mini-cars.
I then spotted a rock-climbing wall, where the musclebound operator all but dared me to give it a try. I did, reluctantly, even though my arms look more like Olive Oyl's.

I more or less conquered my Everest, climbing nearly to the top before jumping off — hoping all the while that he wasn't fibbing about the safety harness. "That was fun," I lied, huffing and puffing.

Next: the $40 million Ripley's Aquarium, also located at Broadway. Welcome to what's billed as the world's largest underwater tunnel, with 4-inch acrylic glass holding back 6 million pounds of water. It contains all manner of colorful fish, eels, piranhas, sea horses and the largest display of sharks on the East Coast, some 9 feet long. The glass looks paper thin, and you can stare into the cold black eyes of the sharks from only a few inches away.

The designers were smart enough to install a moving 330-foot gliding sidewalk to keep kids and adults moving at a steady pace, oohing and aahing along the way.

We hadn't even left Broadway at the Beach, and I was already beginning to see what Chamber of Commerce spokesman Stephen Greene meant when he boasted, "Myrtle Beach now is more like an a la carte buffet."

That buffet includes heaping helpings of golf (111 full-size and 47 miniature courses) and country music (11 giant theaters).

Last year, the real Myrtle Beach golf courses tallied half a million tee times. Still, most are nicely kept up, with well-clipped greens and fairways. That was certainly the case at the Augusta National-like Granddaddy Pine Lakes International Country Club, which offers — for those who like stylin' and profilin' on the links — yellow Rolls-Royce golf carts.

Golf's about the only thing that attracts Atlantans, Greene laments, because, "We just can't convince people down there that we've changed."

Alas, some things haven't changed.

There's bumper-to-bumper traffic from about 11 a.m. to after midnight on Ocean Boulevard, the main drag. Near the Pavilion, and another carnival-like park called Family Kingdom, college students and teens in packed cars keep alive the Myrtle Beach tradition of cruising at about 4 mph.

Aggravation soon sets in, but when your goal is to see as much as possible, there's little time to chill. About the only time we spent on our oceanfront deck was when we opened the sliding glass door at night so we could hear the pounding waves.

Pounding waves? Oh, did we forget to mention the beach? That may be because we managed to spend only 45 minutes in three days with our toes touching sand.

Instead, we were exploring spots such as Brookgreen Gardens, 16 miles south, because after a day of hustling, we needed to catch our breath and literally smell the roses.

It's a gorgeous, 9,170-acre green space full of giant Spanish moss-draped oaks. Much more than a park, Brookgreen is loaded with sculpture, boasting 811 stunning bronzes, all by American artists, including Daniel Chester French and Frederic Remington.

On the prowl for more amusements, we passed Coastal Federal Field, home of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, the Atlanta Braves' Class A farm team. Now, who can resist seeing future Braves who are still wet behind the ears? The cheery new $20 million, 5,300-seat stadium is attractive, intimate and exciting.

From a baseball club to a nightclub — our next stop, Crocodile Rock's Dueling Pianos, was right across the street at Broadway at the Beach. Here, in front of a packed house, two piano men faced each other and pounded out oldies (between jokes that had the giddy audience rolling).
Our encore was a stop at Froggy Bottomz nearby, for a little blues and booze. The place was full of aging boomers, as well as college kids, so for the first time in a while we didn't feel as ancient as a Giganotosaurus, the species of giant meat-eating dinosaur headed next month to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History.

We also made it by the House of Blues at Barefoot Landing, sort of a downscale version of Broadway at the Beach, where Fiona Apple recently packed 'em in.

Country music's not our thing, but we could hardly avoid it here: Myrtle is developing a reputation as the Branson, Mo., of the East. Some of the ornate palaces occasionally feature big names, and others, like the Carolina Opry, put on spiffy variety shows.

If you loved Lawrence Welk and "Hee-Haw," you might like the Carolina. Its revue includes a mixture of Broadway show tunes, bluegrass music, patriotic anthems and gags that, well, just might make you gag.

On paper, it wouldn't seem to go together at all. But in ever-changing Myrtle Beach, it worked just dandy — beauty in the mix of a little bit of everything.